


Anchors in Space

by DG_Fletcher



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 23:34:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4541769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DG_Fletcher/pseuds/DG_Fletcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julian Bashir and Major Kira end up in the Mirror Universe--and now Mirror Garak has Subtext.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchors in Space

**Author's Note:**

> According to Wikipedia, "Mirror Garak is a vicious and sadistic Gul in the Cardassian military". 
> 
> According to Andrew Robinson, "I never liked those alternate universe shows because that Garak was just a stupid bad guy. The thing that's great about our Garak is that he has subtext. There's a lot going on beneath the surface, and if you don't pay attention, then you're in trouble because he's got you. But the mirror Garak had no subtext. He was just a toady opportunist."
> 
> This is "Mirror Universe, keeping Andrew Robinson's subtext and omnisexuality, and then throwing in compulsive sadist."

"Yes, I am Garak," I said. The Terran seemed to recognize me, and I had no idea who he was. 

The Intendant walked up to her double. "The question is 'who are you?" 

The Terran spoke again. "This may seem like an odd question, but could you tell us where we are?"

"This is the Terok Nor station, the center of authority for the Bajoran sector," 

His brow furrowed up and he looked like a lost Drathan puppy dog for a moment, staring at and through me, right into my eyes like he was looking for something and not finding it. 

"Center of authority?!" he cried. "Whose authority?!"

"The Alliance of course," I said. 

Not-Intendant backed up. "Something is very wrong here, I think we took a wrong turn in the wormhole," she said. 

"Wormhole!?" I said. Things just got more interesting. They were from the Mirror Universe. Them. Both of them. And the man definitely knew me. Likely really really well. I decided to test something. 

"The wormhole to the Gamma quadrant," Not-Intendant said. "It's very difficult to explain. I think it would be best if we just got back to our ship and—" 

"No, I don't think so," the Intendant said. I blocked Not-Intendant from going anywhere. 

"Now wait a minute," the Terran cried. 

I flicked a glance at him and started the test. From the depths of everything I had, I spun on him and sneered "Don't take that tone with me, Terran!"—and waited. 

He looked like someone had just punched him in the gut. "Terran?" he squeaked. Other Me meant something to him. Something important. He was so shook up at my hostility that his hands were trembling. 

The Intendant's whiny voice broke our eye contact. "If you are whom I suspect you are, I'm afraid I can't run the risk of letting you go. Take that one below, Put him to work, tell the supervisor to keep an eye on him. He won't know the rules." 

I didn't like ONE Intendant's whiny, sniveling voice. Now there were two to contend with—and some Terran who Other Me had a deep, soulful relationship with. 

My needs: figure out what was up with him. Cardassia's needs: officially, comply with the Alliance's "kill anyone from the Mirror Universe" people. Obsidian Order's needs: figure out if abiding by the Alliance's "kill anyone from the Mirror Universe" was worth it in this case, or if leaving it open would generate something better. 

At the moment, the Intendant would take care of Cardassia's needs, so I could focus on the other two. Bajorans and Terrans and half a dozen other ugly little nobodies were all along a ribbon of the known universe, with eerie thin skin and eerie thin skulls. They conveyed so much emotion above and between the eyes—and this Terran's forehead had been conveying a million emotions. 

We arrived on the Promenade and some idiot Terran was up to some idiot Terran thing again. He'd been caught trying to stow away on one of the freighters leaving the station. The Intendant kept whining at him with her creepy little whisper voice she does when she's trying to be "friendly" and failing, and I was going to let it go, when it occurred to me—I could use this Terran as practice in reading Terran facial emotions.

"You worked soooo hard to earn your Theta designation, to earn our trust!!" The Intendant wheedled. "Why do you throw it away like this? Reassign him to Lambda. Send him to the mines." 

"The mines?" I said. I needed him for forehead reading practice. "But he should die for this! We should make an example of him!"

The Indendant turned and faced me. "You've made a career out of setting examples, Garak. I think you enjoy it too much," 

Well yes, but that wasn't the point right now. I pulled a random rebuttal off my mental shelf of random rebuttals and flung it at her. 

"He could not have gotten on board that ship without help. This is the third incident in a month. At least allow me to interrogate him!" At least allow me to practice reading Terran foreheads!

The Intendant did her annoying hip shimmy. "Fine. Interrogate him."

With pleasure.

"But if he dies under your interrogation, I will make -you- my example, is that clear?"

Maybe not so much pleasure. 

"Very, Intendant." The little brat. 

I brought Terran 0413 to the holding cell and milked him for all he was worth. Grief. Terror. Relief. Pain. Fear. Always watching his eyebrows, his forehead, holding him down and letting all the emotion read in just the face. The Terran from the Mirror Universe meant nothing to me—but I meant something to him.

There was something there, something back in the Mirror Universe. Was I his mentor? His overling? His underling?? What kind of relationship did Terrans and Cardassians have back there, and what kind of relationship did the two of us have? 

The Obsidian Order's needs and Cardassia's needs were fully satisfied, but even getting to play with the Ferengi barkeep wasn't as fun as it should have been. 

I walked out onto the Promenade, planning to speak with the Mirror Universe Kira, appoint her in place of the Intendant and keep the Terran for myself—when it occurred to me that their world was different. The Intendant here was bad enough. She was the kind of person who would and did fly off the handle on a regular basis. Not-Intendant would be that and worse. She'd seemed baffled that Bajor was powerful.

Approach the Intendant when she felt powerful and she'd gently strangle. Make her feel threatened and she'd bite. Pull her from a universe where Bajor wasn't the center of the Alliance, and she'd probably bite by default. Add to that the terror I'd seen in her face earlier and it was about as safe as cornering a rabid Cardassian vole. She'd balk at whatever plan I suggested simply because it was a plan, and Crazy doesn't handle plans well under pressure. 

I'd start with my Terran. Maybe the whole thing was pointless and I was imagining the entire thing anyway. 

I sent down one of my workers and brought the Terran down to the Brig on the pretense of, well, pretty much whatever my worker wanted to come up with. According to her, he'd been plotting to poison Odo, not that that was remotely possible. The Changeling didn't eat. 

The Terran sat on the floor of the Brig cell, staring off into nothing. Someone had struck him across the face at least once and he'd unzipped his collar a little bit. He looked up when I came in and retracted a bit, afraid. 

"You know me," I said, "From the Mirror universe." I watched his face through the transparent energy field. His eyes and his damn forehead. His eyes darted up and down, all the way to the ground and back up to my face. 

I returned the favor, going all the way down his black and turquoise uniform and all the way back up. Down was easy. Up? There was another me somewhere, in some kind of relationship. Were we... lovers? Terrans were filthy, idiotic savages with their most useful era far, far behind him. I'd come down here wondering what the other him saw in Other Me. Now I was here wondering what Other Me saw in him!

"You're a tailor," he said, standing up and staying far, far away from me.

Oh. That was disappointing. Had his whole "look me up and down" just been him inspecting my uniform? I brushed off the badge with the back of my fingers. "A tailor?" I scoffed. "Is your technology so shabby you must craft your clothes by hand? And what are you? A gardener?"

He took a step back and his eyes flicked on the defensive. 

"A doctor actually, sir," he spat. His face flicked with that same desperate grief he'd had at our first meeting. 

"A doctor? I detest doctors. Your crowded little infirmaries are an exercise in cramped humiliation," 

He rolled his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. "We've had that conversation before," he said. "Recently!" 

"Have we?" I folded my arms and looked him over again. "I'm a tailor. You're a doctor." I paused, waiting for him to lock eyes with me. "But what are we?" I asked. 

Hmm. Green eyes. Terran eyes were always so eerily normal. 

He broke eye contact and turned away, showing vast body language of embarrassment. "That would violate patient confidentiality!" 

Patient confidentiality? I sat down on a guard chair and set him talking about nothing in particular, watching him, listening to him. He was brilliant under a stumbling, naïve exterior. There were layers to his psyche that, when pried back, revealed deeper layers, crisscrossing thoughts, surprises. 

He was in the middle of rattling off an under-informed-but-excellently-presented opinion on classic Cardassian literature when it dawned on me—Other Me anchored to this man, and the Doctor had no idea. 

Here, my anchors were myself, Cardassia, and the Obsidian Order. There, my anchors included him. I'd anchored to people before. Enabrin Tain said I had a “gift”. What I had was him as an anchor, an audience. Between tasks, do those that made Enabrin Tain happy. That worked perfectly all the way until he had the nerve to retire on me. 

Now I floated in a sea of politics and mixed messages and goals that never quite congealed quite right. There was the Status Quo to maintain, Cardassia was a lovely anchor, but broad. Go out, do your job, love your country, done. The Obsidian Order was a lovely anchor. Go out, do your job, watch for openings to serve Cardassia that no one else saw, follow through on those, done. But still so broad. 

Good, strong anchors were rare, and this doctor was the most "anchorable" person I'd met in many, many years. Physically, he was no one. Just some Terran with tiny Terran shoulders and an eerie wiggly forehead, but mentally, psychologically, his dense ego kept him from realizing he was being watched while the "doctor" in him generated enough observation of the ''other” to keep him watching Other Me, and the clarity of what he needed was easy to read because he was blunt and naiive and oblivious enough to state exactly what was on his mind. 

Other Me smiled because this doctor expected him to. He was gregarious with their Terran Federation because the doctor was “watching”, even though the doctor didn't know it. Other Me did things because the doctor was there to perform for—and now I had him. 

What could I be with him though? 

What did he expect me to be? 

Everything crystallized and crackled into place in my head in a way it hadn't done since training with Tain. The rush of clarity I had watching him hadn't existed in years. 

He listened. He retorted. He watched. He answered back. He enjoyed watching me mess with his head. 

Build my "world" around him, and anything was possible. 

I was his enigma and he was mine. 

Build my world Around him, and Anything was possible. 

And to top it off, he'd read some very good books, albeit at Other Me's request. 

I left him there in the Brig, thinking he was in grave danger of some sort. Really, this was the safest place to keep him. It was less stress on his valuable doctor hands than ore extraction. 

Build My world around Him, and anything was possible. 

I was so giddy my hands shook and the edges of the room glowed. I stopped in one of the bay windows that faced away from Bajor into the stars. Staring out at the vastness of the stars out through one of the windows, for the first time in a very long time, it felt like I was out there, out there and everywhere. 

My needs? Quit shaking! Cardassia and my Obsidian Order? No wonder the Alliance, run by Bajor, wanted the Mirror Universe kept secret: in the Mirror Universe, Cardassia crushed them under their feet for sixty years. Cardassia needed that. The Obsidian Order needed that.

And my Enigma? 

What he wanted was to be back in his own universe, but my needs came before his—and I needed him here. He was my lynchpin, my Anchor, my Audience. 

He needed to think I wanted to rescue him, that I was on his side, to trust me completely—while I wrapped everything I had around him and his Mirror World. Satisfy me. Satisfy Cardassia. Satisfy the Obsidian Order. Satisfy the look in his eyes. 

The next six hours were research and planning—and setting the stage took only 20 minutes. My Anchor thought the food was merely prison rations, the Not-Intendant thought she'd escaped that room herself, and they both thought their shuttle was safe to fly with.

Right on cue, the Intendant beeped on my communicator. "She's getting away!" 

"On my way, Intendant," I said. 

All three of them were in the shuttle when I arrived. The Intendant. The Not-Intendant. My Anchor. 

"I thought I could trust you!" the Intendant cried to her Mirror self. "I gave you everything you could want, kept you alive, kept you out of the mines, and now this is how you thank me??" she cried. "You want to set an example, Garak? Use him. Set an example for all Terrans. Let him die slowly in public view on the Promenade. Let his pleads for mercy echo through the corridors for all Terrans to hear.”

That caught me off guard. 

The thought had never crossed my mind. 

I walked up to him and looked him up and down again. What would it feel like to break someone with that much depth? To trade out my secrets and my Anchor for the blatant truths of torture? The back and forth of our conversations switched out for the full control of my interrogation room? That voice bent into screams of agony. That face wrenched in pain-wracked hell until I crushed the life out of him? I caught my hand going up to touch his face all of its own accord as he leaned away, terrified. 

“What did Bashir ever do to you!?” Not-Intendant demanded. Yes, what did the doctor do to get the Intendant mad at him? I'd set it up so Mirror Intendant was patently at fault for the entire escapade. 

"He tried to poison Odo! The only one of his kind. This man has no respect for anything!"

Oh that. 

"WHY WOULD YOU THINK WE'D TRY TO POISON ODO??!" Not-Intendant yelled. "The man can't even EAT! Doesn't eat. Whatever." She stepped forward with a phaser aimed at the Intendant, and I moved away from her. The instant someone shot off a phaser, everything I set up would go off. 

Did I want it to? I could feel the Interrogation Room calling to me. 

The Intendant leaned in against her Mirror self. "Then why was that what was on his charge file?"

"I put it there to get him out of the mines," I said. It didn't look like the Intendant was going to fire her phaser anyway. If it was going to go off, I'd have to shoot something myself. 

"WHAT?!" the Intendant said. 

"What?" the Doctor's face was suddenly adorable—and that Interrogation Room was going to have to find somebody else to have fun with. I knew exactly why Other Me anchored to him. Screams coming from him would be hilarious and awkward. I went from daydreaming about which method of interrogation to try first to wanting to hug him, skinny Terran shoulders and all. 

Oddly, Not-Intendant wasn't surprised I'd done anything. THAT was weird. 

Watching the Intendant's shoulders to see if she'd aim anything at me, I pulled out my phaser and turned to stand by my Anchor instead of in front of him. 

"He's a doctor." I said. He gave me a sidelong glance. I hadn't known that before our conversation and he knew that. 

With my free hand, I reached down and pulled his hand up so the Intendant could see it. "They're doctor hands. It wouldn't be fitting to break them under the petty task of ore extraction when they could be used to save YOUR life if you need it, Intendant."

The next four things happened in about 2 ½ seconds. 

The Indendant's right shoulder flicked and she moved to hit her com badge, probably a call to Odo she'd never get to make. I shot in her general direction. Aim wasn't important. The only thing that was important was the phaser going off. I yanked the Doctor down to the ground. All the precision explosives I'd set up went off—triggered by the phaser fire. 

The beeper on my combadge and in his digestive tract kept them from going off near us, and they were "random" enough that he wouldn't have enough info to know that. 

Everything lit on fire and I pulled him out of it and into the hallway.

Anchor to self secure. I was fine.  
Anchor to Cardassia fine. I had Terok Nor.  
Anchor to Obsidian Order fine. I had disabled the shuttle long enough that we had time to figure out what to do about the Mirror Universe, while also keeping my Anchor as an informant.  
Anchor to him. The whole damn plan had worked. I squeezed his hand once without looking at him, then let go and stood up, reacting exactly like I was supposed to. 

Unfortunately, the Doctor was still in trouble with Odo, requiring Plan B. 

“Major Kira!” I said because it seemed appropriate, and darted back inside—then stood inside the doorway, and let one of the small fires on the edge of the room cause a small burn on my arm, just enough to merit a doctor. I scanned the two Bajorans on the ground. They were still alive. I whacked the “close and detach” button and jumped out, flinging the burning shuttle into space where it promptly exploded right on schedule.

Odo showed up to see the Doctor being a Doctor on my burns. 

Now I "owed him" enough to merit getting him off the hook from Odo, with time to bury the scant documentation that he was ever from the Mirror Universe. 

Anchor to self satisfied: Plan B still hurt, but otherwise fine.  
Anchor to Cardassia satisfied: I owned Terok Nor.  
Anchor to Obsidian Order satisfied: The next couple months would be studying the Mirror Universe and dealing with whatever arose out of that.  
Anchor to him: he believed me to be on his side. I'd gone back in to rescue his Not-Intendant, right? I had him. I had an audience, an anchor. 

I'd built my world around him, and now anything was possible.

\--  
Where does it go after this? That depends on a lot of variables. Does Normal Sisko figure out they went to the Mirror Universe? Does Mirror Garak decide to keep the Mirror Universe and the Wormhole hidden as an ace up his sleeve or use it as his main weapon, pushing Mirror Cardassia/Obsidian Order to power? What's Mirror Dominion up to? Does Bashir figure out Mirror Garak's a compulsive sadist who totally manipulated the tar out of everything to get him locked on this side? What does Normal Garak do? His Bashir's now missing!


End file.
